As conflict and military rule continue, Mumyit Sinli Pukdun argues that a major rethink in international aid is essential with a focus on civil society which is at the heart of community resilience and support for national change. Lessons need to be learned from the failed donor policies of the past three decades. Not only has the nature of political challenges been misunderstood but many international agencies have also followed aid policies that have undermined local capacity and organisations. In Myanmar’s latest cycle of state breakdown, support to civil society is vital to address emergency needs and socio-political transformation in the long term.

Although militarism enables and prolongs war, since the invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have ratcheted up defence spending, strengthened military alliances, and intensified divisive rhetoric. Perhaps stopping the war isn’t the end goal but rather defeating Russia, regardless of how long that may take or what the immediate and long term cost of that strategy may be. How did we get here and where will this unbridled militarism lead us?

Why did the pandemic spiral out of control in India? Why did some states see many more people dying than others?

Tensions are rising in Arakan (Rakhine State) where a ceasefire exists between the Myanmar military government and Arakan Army. On the surface, the relative stability contrasts with the chaos that has enveloped many other parts of the country following last year’s coup. In this commentary, Kyaw Lynn analyses the changing landscape highlighting that, while confrontations are occurring, neither side appears yet ready to return to open warfare. “Retaliatory” actions, though, are increasing.

Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ point out, poorer and marginalised communities face particular exposure to environmental harms.

This holds especially true for populations in the Global South, including Myanmar. The role of opium cultivation in relation to these environmental stresses is an underexplored terrain. Yet, as this new TNI report argues, drugs, as well as the policy responses to them, are an environmental crisis in Myanmar as well as other countries where opium poppy, coca bush and cannabis plants are cultivated.

While the struggle against military rule continues, Lahkyen Roi analyses in this commentary how natural resource exploitation, land-grabbing and the marginalisation of local peoples underpin poverty, suffering and conflict in Kachin State. A once pristine land of biodiverse forestry, mineral and water potential, Kachin State is today one of Myanmar’s poorest territories. While the natural environment is degraded, the resources of local communities are plundered by outside actors, over-extraction, business cronies and military elites. The establishment of political reform and peace in a new system of federal democracy is essential if the local peoples are to live decent and dignified lives.

The undersigned civil society organisations, trade unions, human rights, animal welfare and environmental defenders, address this statement to policy makers in Mexico and the European Union (EU) to call on them not to ratify the “modernised” EU-Mexico Free Trade Agreement (EU-Mexico FTA).  The text was negotiated behind the backs of citizens without debate or public consultation, and was finalised in April 2020, in the midst of one of the worst health, social and economic crises in the world, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Satoko Kishimoto, Programme Coordinator for TNI’s Public Alternatives programme, has been elected mayor of Suginami City, a ward of 500,000 people in Tokyo. Satoko's colleagues at TNI are very happy for her.

Even in the midst of a global health emergency, companies treated the ill and the vulnerable as consumers and vaccines as commodities, setting prices and production rates that maximise profit.

Fish auction markets, or ‘halles à marées’, are fundamental public players on French coastal areas. They enable small-scale and industrial fishing professionals to sell and buy the day's catch. Some of them, such as the one in the French port city of Quiberon, Brittany, have adopted their own strategy to compete with larger fish markets. The Quiberon fish market has chosen to distinguish itself by selling live fish and applying the Japanese slaughtering method called ikejime. Initially implemented for economic reasons, this strategy now seems to offer some of the key characteristics of more sustainable fishing.

El presente documento explora el origen y desarrollos de los modelos de Erradicación Manual Forzosa EMF, en el marco de su uso para garantizar la implementación de la estrategia de reducción de la oferta de drogas referida especialmente a los cultivos de uso ilícito, ámbito donde se desenvuelve con mayor intensidad los costos humanos, pero también la afectación de la legitimidad estatal por la guerra contra las drogas en Colombia.